Caption: Common's observatory. Telescopes erected in the 1870s by the British astronomer Andrew Ainslie Common (1841-1903) at Ealing, near London, England. Common polished his own mirrors and built his own telescopes, like many of the amateur astronomers of the time. One of the telescopes Common built was his 60-inch reflector. In 1884, he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and from 1895-1896 he was the society's president.